Crysta
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Posts posted by Crysta
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8 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:
Unlike this metaphor though neither party in the US is a singular monolith and are instead composed of many different people with differeing opinions. And we don't have the liberty of simply divorcing the Republican party and living apart.
We do have the option of never taking them seriously again and working to ensure they don't get near the levers of power again. The solution certainly not going to great lengths to gut your own legislation just because you're afraid they're going to turn it into another wedge issue (they will turn anything into a wedge issue if people are credulous enough), and thinking that is actually progress and a way to not just ensure the cycle continues.
So yeah, it is kind of similar.
EDIT: hell I'm not even sure if these 'wedge' issues are as effective any more: if Trump embraced facemasks and didn't needlessly kill thousands of people he'd probably would have won re-election
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Not gonna lie, this feels a lot like telling someone in an abusive relationship to be careful about angering their partner because you know what they'll get hit again, instead of like... actually dealing with the abusive partner.
EDIT: Seriously the most basic of preventative measures – wearing a facemask and not being all up in someone's space – were turned into political causes du jour b/c the moron thought it would help him get re-elected. Democrats are not nearly as irresponsible with the wedge issues.
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21 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:
The fringe on the Democratic side does not have a united front. They've largely spun off into 3rd parties. Currently I'd argue the fringe elements that get the most Republican attention are the wannabe bolshevik revolutionaries who have tried to themselves to currently the BLM movement and before that the Occupy Wall street movement. Groups like Antifa. Various environmental extremest groups though they have largely been surpressed in recent years following terrorist attacks by ELF in the 1990's and early 2000's.
None of these have upset the balance of power within the Democratic party in the same way MAGA types have. But that won't stop the Republicans from using them as wedges to dissuade voters from associating themselves with these groups due to "perceived ties to the democratic party".
While I don't think they are equivalent. Similar arguments are used by both sides to convince their side not to vote for the other side. I don't really see campaigns as all that different across party lines. The song is different but the tune is the same. So I'm quite worried that they might backfire on the Democrats in a similar manner to the Republicans if we aren't careful.
Yeah the current "fringe" democrats aren't very... dangerous, and the concessions they have managed to wring out of the Democratic Party have largely been good and widely popular. If Bernie and AOC are the worst they have they are doing pretty good. Antifa and BLM are favorite bogeymans of the conservatives right now, but they're willing to go great lengths to vilify even the most milquetoast democrats. I don't consider those movements inherently radical at all.
We need to stop entertaining bad Republican arguments. I don't care if they use them and I'm certainly not afraid of them when they inevitably do: lampoon and ridicule them, because they deserve it.
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19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:
While I agree that we shouldn't allow the reaction to totally dictate policy making, I do think we need to focus on what policies are realistically implementable in the long term. Currently we have a game of political football going on where executive orders are punted back and forth as administrations change. I believe there is one abortion related funding order that flips with each successive president since the Clinton era at the least. I think this is done more for visibility and political leverage than actually making functional policy, but I do strongly believe this kind of unstable policy making is far more damaging to society in the long term than a less effective but more stable policies that can last across administrations.
We need to focus on winning a large enough majority to implement long overdue policies because the Republicans aren't really interested in actual governance, just obstructionism and creating dumb wedge issues to galvanize their base. We do not need to take them seriously as a political party because they are no longer a serious political party. They did not actually run on any policy this election: just a cult of personality.
Democrats will inevitably have to water down what they present if they want to get it passed, but it doesn't have much to do with stability. We don't need to pretend it's complex or that norms haven't been completely tossed aside.
19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:Let's not forget the Republican hold almost identical views on the democrats
No. Democrats don't currently have Qanon believers among their ranks. They don't actively campaign on harming minorities, engage in voter surpression, or try to overturn an election. Obama and Trump are nothing alike, even policy-wise.
A lot of Republicans know what they spew is utter bullshit.
If we really wanna stop our current cycle isn't it a good idea to, you know, have the Democrats stop behaving the way they have been for as long as I can remember and not give the Republicans wriggle room they would never even think about giving them?
The Patriot Party will do plenty of harm in the local elections. That may not be enough to worry you, but it should.
19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:These are definitely big concerns. But the flow of disinformation works both ways. Extreme and fringe elements of both parties are magnified and made to look mainstream in an attempt to scare people into voting for the other guy. Rather than actually focusing on effective policies, it's much more expedient to simply bring out the "fear vote".
The "fringe" element of the left is not in any way comparable to what is now mainstream on the right. This is fiction.
What do you consider the fringe elements? Are they the current mouthpieces of the Democratic party?
19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:I think far more troubling and endemic than the white supremacist groups is the religious extremist wing of the Republican party.
It sort of blends together now. It's not surprising that a lot of fervor in the qanon circles sounds a lot like religious quakery.
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I think Biden can significantly improve the lives of 90% of Americans and they'd still believe the narrative they've been fed. Fox News is a disease.
Obamacare was watered down af but it was still a good thing and we saw how much they appreciated that lol
I think Biden throwing all the "radical" stuff he wants out right away is a good move even if Republicans are going to try to harpoon it with all their might and it'll inevitably get watered down: if the last four years has had any tangential benefit, it has been exposing how truly ridiculous Republican justifications are now that they've spent so much of their time and energy carrying water for a racist ignoramus.
It's going to be hard to put the mask back on, but they sure as hell gonna try. Don't let them.
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4 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:
While the potential to do so exists I'd very much question whether the long term ramifications of such actions are worth it. Obama did this on healthcare and the end result ended up being an inability to get most anything done following the mid term elections, which left us essentially in the same place as we were before that was passed. Somethings improved, some things got worse, but the system ended up deadlocked for most the rest of his presidency and was one of the primary factors that lead to the rise of Trump and his victory in 2016.
I think if Biden pushes too hard here it can only end with more sectarian violence from the fringes and mainstream backlash from the opposition which will be another ripe situation for someone similar to Trump to be able to take advantage of again.
Yeah lets stop letting how the other side may react dictate what we should do. They literally vowed to do everything they can to make Obama a one-term president at the onset: go into this knowing that'll be the game plan and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. They have relentlessly proven they do not act in good faith. They know better.
Be more concerned about the massive pipeline of disinformation that has been peddled to a significant portion of Trump voters which has utterly convinced them that we're baby-eating Satanists, and the white supremacists organizations who are undoubtedly licking their chops now that the cultists are beginning to have doubts now that Dear Leader has rolled over and left them. Whatever comes out of that will probably be this "Patriot Party".
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IT'S BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER
anyone who uses parler should be denied security clearance
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27 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:
If I was an employer and a candidate put on their CV that they'd worked at the White House during the Trump Administration, I'd refuse to hire them regardless of what position they had. I would not want my company to have any association with his administration, no matter how insigificant their role was.
That's cool, but you're not going to be their would-be employer. Not everyone in government shares the same ideology.
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I can believe that the enablers how have shown their faces on media outlets and have become the faces of the Trump administration may have difficulty keeping the stink off.
The ones who have mostly gone unnoticed and talked behind the veil of anonymity (most of them), though? They'll be forgotten about in two-four years. They may have difficulty finding employment in a Democratic administration for obvious reasons, but they'll have a cushy place for them in conservative circles if they're willing to settle for that. If a Republican is ever elected again, they'll be welcomed back.
They'll be fine one way or the other.
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These aides have been peddling palace intrigue bullshit to the press from the start and always furrow their brows and wring their hands when the bossman does something bad, but stay onboard specifically for their upcoming tell-all book, I'm sure.
They worry the stink of Trump will follow them to their next place of employment, but I'm willing to bet we'll be eager to overlook their complicity in favor of getting those juicy anti-Trump details.
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Sure, if that was what they were actually doing.
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They've been babysitting him since he took office. They're pretty useless/spineless.
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To be fair I didn't know wtf it was a couple days ago, either.
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Doesn't feel like things are going limp anywhere on this front. If one platform goes offline, they simply gravitate towards another.
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it's a meme that's much better in it's original form:
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Yeah he got his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher.
The more details that come out the worse it looks in general, really.
EDIT: This is a good account of the entirety of what happened... or at least most of it.
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Well, no one is stopping you from taking those courses even en route to a different degree. After high school, your education is largely in your own hands.
Our capitalist society just undervalues liberal arts courses and degrees.
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1 minute ago, Armchair General said:
Honestly, I could do without those. I just want a STEM degree without paying extra, FFS.
I suspect a lot of people feel the same.
EDIT: And I'll keep having to explain what the 1st amendment is
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Outside filling the spacious gaps in our U.S. history courses, a loooooot more people need to take sociology and political science courses in college
Or earlier than that, really
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12 minutes ago, Armchair General said:
He could always start his own website, like Alex Jones did.
But then again, there's a difference between being an (entertaining) conspiracy theorist that everyone believes and being a failed politician.
Betting on a podcast where he just rambles incoherently for three hours, personally.
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Yeah being against big tech monopolies is a pretty standard leftist policy plank. The difference is that these guys only care when it personally affects them and have the ideological consistency of oatmeal.
They're really going with this take. We're engaging in equally irresponsible behavior by having the audacity to call for accountability.
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3 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:
I mean
These people do realize that they agreed to a Terms of Service when they signed up onto Twitter, right?
... Right???
Lol he would have been banned a long time ago if he wasn't the President and given the world's largest bully pulpit for four years.
We've finally reached the top of a steep uphill climb. It's definitely not the scary slippery slope right wing media working themselves rabid trying to pretend it is.
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Apparently twitter is life and being banned for not following a ToS is like complete erasure! There are no other ways you can communicate.
Also banning him is just stoking the fire more, I cry, as I try to hide my can of gasoline.
This was one of the more promising 2016 presidential hopefuls and not so long ago considered a rising star in the republican party. Completely unserious people.
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Eh the Republican party is a white identitarian party right now
anything that threatens whiteness or heteronormativity is bad
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Pleeeeeease don't fall for this bs omg
General US Politics
in Serious Discussion
Posted · Edited by Crysta
You haven't really tried. You've just cautioned us not to alienate them too much because they still exist and you want us to remain the center which, quite frankly, is becoming untenable when one end of the spectrum is now explicitly anti-democratic. Insisting on appealing to the voters who are somehow still on the fence on whether or not fascism is good is not a healthy strategy.
A near 50/50 split is not great for us, but they look downright ridiculous when they try to bring up their classic wedges now (illegal immigration/caravans, coastal elitists versus working class, 'cancel culture' = 1984). They still have abortion maybe but that's supported by most of the country. This is not pre-2017.